


Something to Offer

by implicated2



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (and showering afterwards), Begging, Bladeplay, Bloodplay, Coming In Pants, Cutting, D/s, Duck's Destiny, Humiliation, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Other, Restraint, Training for Battle, Yuleporn, enemies to lovers (kind of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 11:02:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17120147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/implicated2/pseuds/implicated2
Summary: Sometimes Duck didn’t so much decide to do something as see something coming and decide not to fight it.Duck embraces his masochism. Beacon teaches swordplay.





	Something to Offer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Toft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/gifts).



Duck Newton wouldn’t have said he chose to fight monsters exactly, more like he stopped choosing not to fight them. He still couldn’t say why. Maybe because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when one popped up in his own Monongahela forest. Maybe because Minerva had appeared, a loud, shimmering vision from his past, to bully him into it. But maybe there was another reason too, something more hopeful—a small, nagging sense that maybe the universe hadn’t fucked up by entrusting Ranger Duck Newton with whatever this destiny thing was. Maybe Duck had something to offer after all.

The hardest part to swallow of the whole destiny thing was Beacon. Twenty years after he’d last seen Beacon, Duck could still picture him—the coiled blade, the eerie, thin-lipped mouth, the way the whole sword seemed to hum, or pulse, or shimmer with alien emotion—in Duck’s case, mostly disapproval. He’d had to drag his feet every step toward the dusty display case where he’d stashed Beacon twenty years earlier, had sat through a long and thorough tongue-lashing, Beacon abuzz with condescension. And then that night, they’d fought together and won. Maybe that was when things had started to shift.

 

If Duck was going to be a monster hunter—and seeing how he’d spent the previous night torching some kind of amalgamated bear, the _if_ on that proposition seemed to have sailed—he figured he may as well get his body ready. He got up early before his ranger shift and dressed for a run. At the last minute, he took Beacon down from the mug cabinet and brought him along. After everything, it didn’t seem right to leave his weapon home.

Duck couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone running. He must have been a lot younger, whenever it was, because he didn’t remember his knees complaining nearly so much, or his heart thumping so painfully against his ribs. By the time he reached the clearing, a mile or so from the trailhead, his lungs were burning. He lay Beacon on a low rock and bent to a squat, stretching his aching quads and trying to catch his breath.

“An ingenious plan, to be sure.”

Over the pounding in his ears, Duck could barely make out Beacon’s voice. “What’s that now?”

“A cunning strategy,” Beacon drawled. “For combatting your foes. Just take a human body and _age it twenty years_.”

Beacon’s tone, Duck noted distantly, sounded more exasperated than angry. “Yeah,” he said, between ragged gasps. “In hindsight, that may not have been the best approach.” Duck blew out a breath. Even his lungs felt sore. “Shit, Beacon, I’m winded. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea.”

Beacon sneered, alien lips curling around his words. “Perhaps in another twenty years, the great power of hindsight will suggest that practice makes it less likely your duty will kill you.”

“I know, man,” Duck said. He was out here for a reason, after all. “Trouble is, I think if I run much more, my legs are gonna kill me before the monsters get a shot.”

“Then perhaps you might practice something different.”

Duck eyed Beacon. More likely than not a punchline was coming. “You got something in mind?”

“Swordplay, for example.” Beacon hummed, a low, tentative crackle.

“Huh.” Duck wasn’t too keen on the idea of waving a sword around in the middle of the forest, but given the whole monster hunting situation, some sword waving was probably inevitable. He tested the weight of Beacon in his hand, then shifted gingerly on shaking legs. “Yeah, all right,” he said. As long as he was done running, his body could probably take a few rounds. “Where do we start?”

For the next… twenty minutes? … an hour? Beacon talked him through a routine of lunges and parries, slashes and ripostes. There was a rhythm to it, and Duck found his movements came more or less fluidly, as if his untrained body somehow still knew the right shapes to make. Even Beacon seemed pleased, humming with satisfaction as his blade slashed at the air, coaxing Duck to try new stances, to keep his back straight, his arms in. All things considered, Duck would still rather have been patrolling the forest in a purely civilian capacity, but there was something to this—to pushing himself, to wielding a sword, to running back to the trailhead on straining legs, aching but accomplished.

There was something else, too. Beacon was annoying, sure, but sometimes, when he sneered at Duck, or mocked him, or laid out his failings in harsh detail, some part of Duck liked it. Duck had kind of a thing for people being mean to him in certain circumstances—a thing for having his actions scrutinized, and even more of a thing for being told exactly how badly he’d fucked up whatever it was he was supposed to have done. An odd predilection, maybe, for someone who’d blown off following the biggest, weirdest order he’d ever received, but there it was.

It wasn’t exactly unheard of, getting your buttons pushed less by good looks than by insults and intimidation, but Duck had never done much about it. There was a woman a few towns over from Kepler who did pro-dominatrix work, and sometime back in his early thirties, Duck had gotten it into his head to try some kind of session with her. He’d never made himself go through with it, though. In the end, it seemed too much like his destiny—a lot of effort for something he probably wouldn’t be any good at anyway.

It was easier not to think about it. Most people were too decent to talk to him in ways that might set him off, and if his mystical sword was an exception, well, Duck knew how to ignore things he didn’t want to deal with.

 

Maybe the first time was beginner’s luck, or maybe Duck’s aching muscles held him back, because their next outing, nothing flowed. The run was just as punishing as before, and when he unfurled Beacon to practice combat, he kept getting set off-balance. Beacon stuck to coaching him at first, seeming to enjoy leading even an inelegant charge, but when an overbalanced lunge sent Beacon flying from Duck’s grasp, his familiar snideness returned.

“What a clever gambit.” Beacon enunciated each consonant with grating slowness. “Did you think of that yourself, Duck? Throwing your mystical blade like a cheap knife?

Heat bloomed in Duck’s cheeks as he went to retrieve the sword. “Yeah, sorry about that, man. Move got away from me.” He picked Beacon up by the hilt. There was an energy to him, an agitated buzz.

“For a moment, I thought I had gained a new ability.” Beacon’s hilt was warm to the touch. “Duck Newton’s mystical flying blade. Is that what you wish of me, Duck?”

Hearing his name in Beacon’s contemptuous drawl made something in Duck’s stomach twist. “Naw, Beacon, I’m just out of practice is all.”

“Out of practice.” The lips of Beacon’s alien mouth curled around his syllables. “A sword who hasn’t tasted blood since his last battle is out of practice. A man who has spent his entire existence avoiding his destiny—”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Duck cut in. The back of his neck was prickling. There was a part of him lapping up Beacon’s words, wanting to hear exactly how badly he’d messed up this whole hero thing, and he didn’t need to give that part any more fuel. “I’m practicing now, all right? Don’t make me change my mind.”

Beacon hummed in his hand, and Duck swore he could feel amusement emanating from him. “Naturally, I do not wish to discourage our hero. Please go on, we will try our lunge again.”

Duck spent the rest of their exercises, and the run back to the trailhead, trying to ignore the way Beacon’s critical attention made his aching body squirm.

 

After a week or two, practice got easier. Duck found he could run past the clearing, out to the creek that cut across the trail and then along the creek bank. He’d drill with Beacon in the woods, and then again in the lot behind his apartment, his grip on the hilt almost intuitive as he struck at imaginary enemies. Minerva appeared every night now, sometimes with a pep talk, sometimes simply to observe.

The more Duck’s skills improved, the more exacting Beacon became. Any stumble, any small mistake, and Beacon would light into him, gleefully mocking his stance, his technique, his pretense at heroism. It was annoying—Beacon was always annoying—but underneath Duck’s annoyance was that same secret thrill. It was weird, to like being told off by a talking sword, but pretty much everything in Duck’s life had gotten weird. He might as well enjoy it while he could.

 

They were in the clearing practicing parries when things came to a boil. Beacon was stepping him through some sort of advanced attack, and he’d been picking at Duck all session about the placement of his feet. Duck was flushed, and only partly from exertion. It wasn’t as if he wanted to get it wrong. It was more like he wanted to succeed, was terrified of fucking everything up, and found a grim, giddy thrill in falling short.

“Try again,” Beacon said, after his third passable feint. “That last one looked nearly competent.”

“Yeah, thanks, Beacon.” A sheepish warmth played at the corners of his mouth. Duck readied himself, then brought the sword forward.

Or, well. He’d meant to bring the sword forward. Maybe he’d messed up the footwork again, or maybe Beacon’s praise had set him off-balance, but the next thing Duck knew, the sword had slipped from his hand.

A wave of something washed over Duck as he bent to pick Beacon up. A kind of shamefaced resignation, like when Mr. Slooper used to catch him cutting class. Some combination of fear and relief, as if a reckoning was coming, but at least he could finally stop trying to hide whatever it was he’d been doing wrong. “Sorry, Beacon,” he said, wiping dirt off the blade with the sleeve of his jacket.

Beacon’s buzz was just barely audible. Too calm.

“I stepped in that one, huh.” Duck shuffled his feet back into position. “Well, best give it another shot.”

Beacon’s hilt in his hand was still buzzing, a low hum like an electrified wire. “On second thought, don’t try again. Perhaps we shall go into battle unprepared, and I shall bear the great—” he paused, his hum shifting to a contented shimmer “— _burden_ of witnessing your untimely end.”

“You want me dead.” Nothing about that should have thrilled him. And yet it twisted through him anyway, the idea that he’d fucked this up _irredeemably_ , that Beacon knew it, that whatever their bond, whatever had called Duck to his destiny, his worth was negligible in the face of something ancient, and sharp, and merciless.

“Not necessarily.” Beacon drew the words out, and Duck held back a shiver. It was taking real effort to keep his breathing normal, let alone to keep from getting his most inappropriate erection since… well, probably since he’d made a fool of himself on the ski slopes at eighteen while his too-rich girlfriend looked on, rolling her eyes.

“What I want, Duck.” Maybe Beacon couldn’t see Duck’s reaction, couldn’t feel how his voice, lingering contemptuously on the hard consonants of Duck’s name, made Duck’s hand unsteady. “Is a worthy champion. If you are willing to become one, then by all means, let us proceed.”

Duck’s feet were already in position. He thrust the sword forward and leapt back, forward and back, mindful of his shaking hands, uneasy with the sense that he’d gotten away with something, but only barely. This whole thing was getting out of control. If he and Beacon were going to keep working together, something would have to give.

 

Their next outing, Duck kept Beacon coiled. It wasn’t like he needed an unfurled blade to go for a run, and he definitely didn’t need to hear Beacon’s comments on his form and lung capacity. It was peaceful, running through the clearing along the creek trail, the woods full of birdcalls and the rumbles of bullfrogs, Duck’s quick breaths and footfalls the only other sound. Keeping Beacon quiet was probably just delaying the inevitable, but then, sometimes the inevitable was worth delaying. When he doubled back and came once again to the clearing, he took a few practice stances before—sighing and bracing himself—he lunged forward and opened Beacon’s blade.

“Well.” Beacon’s energy was arch and amused. Duck eyed him warily, his hand on the hilt. “It seems my services are no longer required. Was that preferable, running with your weapon as a simple prop?”

Duck didn’t answer. Sometimes it was better to let Beacon’s tirades run their course.

“Perhaps you no longer wish to win your battles, is that the case, Duck? Have you embraced your own mortal defeat?” Beacon seemed to watch him, as if he knew exactly the effect of his last allusion to Duck’s death and wanted to see if his words hit their mark again.

It was too much. It was one thing enjoying Beacon’s comments privately, but Duck didn’t want Beacon using his own weaknesses against him.

“Look, Beacon,” Duck said. “Could you maybe lay off the insults a bit?”

Beacon hummed curiously. “I was under the impression they were… motivating you.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing though.” Duck grasped for an explanation. “Me and motivation, it’s like… I guess I’m kind of allergic? To motivation. Yeah, allergic, it makes my skin kind of… puff up?” Fuck. He had never been good at lying. “I mean, not a lot of skin, just a couple of patches here and there. On my elbows? My shoulders. No, elbows. Fuck.”

Beacon quivered attentively in his hand. There was a hint of amusement about him. “A tragic weakness, to be sure. Imagine our hero, in the heat of battle, brought down by a foe’s quick tongue, inflaming the once-mighty skin of his elbows.”

Duck was blushing again. “Look, it’s not….” He sighed. “Yeah, that elbow thing’s a lie, it’s just…” He sighed again, trying to think up a better lie and not finding one. “Truth is, I’ve got kind of… a masochism streak, I guess you’d call it?” He took a long breath. “So when you say mean shit to me, it kind of sets off my masochism.”

“Ah.” There was something unreadable in Beacon’s hum. “Naturally, if something brings you pleasure, you wish it to cease.”

Duck frowned. Beacon had a point. “Yeah, it sounds funny when you put it like that, but the fact is…” He groped for something that made sense. “I don’t know, man, it’s distracting.”

“And nothing must distract Duck Newton from his sacred duty.”

“Look, Beacon. I’m trying to do the right thing here. I’ve been called to fight monsters, and yeah, I blew it off for a while, half the time I don’t know why I don’t blow it off now, but I’m trying, all right?”

“Of course. Duck.” The way Beacon said his name still made him shiver in spite of himself.

“See, like that,” Duck said. “You say my name in that voice, and it’s like part of me wants to kneel down right here in the woods. That’s distracting, all right?”

Beacon was quiet for a few beats, shimmering contemplatively. Then he gave a low laugh Duck might have called throaty if he’d had any kind of throat. “Very well,” he said, with a thin-lipped smile. “I shall, as you say, lay off.”

 

Somehow, Beacon kept his word. He was all coach in their trainings, talking Duck through new postures, cheering lustily when Duck got off what would have been a hit, offering a reserved correction when he faltered. It really was less distracting this way, and Duck found his body moving more and more naturally. Sometimes it even felt good to be pushing himself, to run just a little further with burning lungs, to lunge on quivering legs and strike forth, his mystical blade exultant. Even Minerva was pleased by his progress, and if it felt strange to be working more with Beacon than against him, well, there was a long list of things that felt strange already.

Whatever had happened in those early days of training, Duck pushed aside as thoroughly as he’d once pushed aside his weapon and his destiny. He fought a water monster and survived. He visited an alien world. Weird shit was basically the new normal.

 

Maybe things would have stayed at equilibrium if Duck hadn’t dropped Beacon again. They were near the end of a session behind the apartment, practicing fundamentals, when it happened.

“Can we go over that right-side cut again, Beacon?” Duck took a ready stance, weight forward, balanced on the balls of his feet.

“Of course,” Beacon said, humming eagerly. “Ready… and… right foot… now forward… weapon up… _that’s_ it, _yes_.”

Duck followed along, slashing right-to-left at Beacon’s command, then coming back left-to-right. Only somehow—maybe Beacon’s weight had shifted, or maybe Duck had lost his footing on the return—his grip faltered on Beacon’s hilt. Duck fumbled, trying to keep Beacon from slipping away completely, but a moment later, Beacon clattered to the pavement.

The feeling came over Duck in a rush, that almost gleeful anticipation. Beacon had refrained from needling him for a while now, but maybe that meant weeks of pent-up insults were on their way. Duck’s breathing went shallow as he picked up Beacon from the ground, shamefaced and eager.

“We’ll try that one again,” Beacon said mildly, when Duck had resumed his stance. Nothing about his energy seemed to have changed. Bullet dodged then, Duck supposed, as he cut right and then left, this time without incident. But he spent the rest of their session fizzing with that same eager energy, waiting—hoping, maybe—for the other shoe to drop.

 

“Man, I thought you were going to lay into me out there,” Duck said, when they were back in his apartment. He laid Beacon on the kitchen table. Normally, he’d have coiled Beacon up by now, but he wasn’t quite ready to let this one go. “When I dropped you on the ground, I mean. It was an accident, obviously, but usually that doesn’t stop you from getting on me about something.”

Beacon’s energy had shifted from a calm, barely noticeable hum to something wry and alert. “I would not wish to distract you from your training.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing, though.” Duck looked away, uneasy. It felt almost normal, having a conversation with his alien sword in his kitchen, but that in itself was weird, right? “It was distracting when you didn’t say something. I kept waiting for you to give me an earful.”

“You wished to have your masochism indulged.”

“What?” Duck’s head turned sharply toward Beacon, alarmed. “Naw, not like that,” he said, though he doubted himself the second the words were out. “I mean, maybe a little like that, fuck, I don’t know.” Could Beacon tell he was blushing? “Naw, no, it’s just weird is all, you being decent to me. Fuck, I don’t know, isn’t it weird to you?”

Beacon shimmered with amusement. “Perhaps.” He was quiet for a moment, then added, “One could of course indulge your masochism after the fact.”

The way Beacon said the word _masochism_ , blunt and lingering, made the back of Duck’s neck prickle. “Sorry, what now?”

“What else do you desire, Duck? Pain? Restraint? Humiliation?”

Duck stared at Beacon, the bright blade, the thin-lipped mouth. “You’re making a pass at me.” The feeling from earlier was back in full force, like climbing the hill of a roller coaster and waiting for the drop.

Beacon’s energy flickered, arch and smug. “Yes.”

“Aw, man, I don’t know.” Duck shifted on his feet, uncomfortably aware of how much of him _did_ know, how badly he was tempted by… whatever exactly was on offer here. “I mean, I don’t really see how that would work, you being a sword and all. I can’t exactly—” he glanced down self-consciously at the crotch of his jeans “—what, coil you around my private parts or something?”

Beacon made a low sound, not quite a laugh. “Just the throat will do.”

Duck found himself short of breath. “Say what now?”

“Your throat, Duck.” The sound of his name in Beacon’s voice, now, made him shiver. “You may coil me around your throat.”

The world was going topsy-turvy. Duck steadied himself against a kitchen chair. “You want to kill me.”

“Regrettably,” Beacon drawled, “I must not kill you. To sit at your throat would simply be the closest I might get to your most… unfortunate demise.”

“Now that’s not fair, Beacon.” Duck breathed shallowly, Beacon’s words echoing through him. “You know how I get about that demise stuff.”

“I do know,” Beacon agreed. “Your reaction is most… gratifying.”

Duck looked up sharply. In all his wondering whether Beacon had noticed anything, it hadn’t occurred to him that Beacon might actually _enjoy_ getting him bent out of shape. “That right?”

“Do you wish to hear me praise your weaknesses?” Beacon was practically incandescent now, with an eagerness Duck had only before seen in battle. “Or do you wish to let me coil against your throat?”

They were at the top of the roller coaster now, no doubt about it. And there was nothing for Duck to do but throw up his hands and ride it out. “Yeah, all right, all right,” he said, still not quite believing it. “Just, what do we…” He looked around, unsure. “I mean, I guess we’d better take this to the bedroom, for privacy or whatever.” It wasn’t as if Leo Tarkesian was likely to peer into his kitchen window, but still.

“If you like.”

Still unsteady, Duck brought Beacon to his bedroom. His bed was made, a thin quilt over a full-size mattress, and he laid Beacon along its side, unsure how to proceed. There was a bedside lamp he used for reading, and he flicked it on, though enough daylight came through around the blinds that it probably wasn’t necessary. Should he stand? Kneel? The thought of being low to the ground seemed appealing, and he dropped to his knees beside the bed. Beacon lay at chest height. “Well,” Duck said, reaching for Beacon’s hilt. “Here goes, I guess.”

“What are you doing?”

Duck’s hand froze in midair.

“If I wanted to sit against twenty year-old flannel, I would direct myself to that pile in your closet.”

“Oh.” Duck hadn’t misread everything then. “You want my shirt off.” He reached for the collar, smooth and worn.

Beacon hummed approval. Duck fumbled with the buttons, then threw the flannel into the corner of the room, lifted his undershirt over his head and threw that too. “All right?”

“Better,” Beacon agreed. It was weird to see him lying against Duck’s bedspread. Weird, for that matter, to be kneeling, half-naked in front of a magic sword, but if he thought too hard about any of this, Duck was going to lose his nerve. “Should I just...”

“Yes,” Beacon said, blade and mouth iridescent in the lamplight. “Go on.”

Sometimes Duck didn’t so much decide to do something as see something coming and decide not to fight it. Lifting Beacon from his bed, pressing the blade carefully against the stubbled skin at his throat, felt like that second kind of decision, a reluctant surrender to the inevitable. As soon as Beacon touched Duck’s skin, the blade changed shape. Cool metal curved around his throat, wrapping once and then again, raising a trail of gooseflesh following the blade’s edge. Adrenaline flooded through him, and he willed his hand to stay firm on Beacon’s hilt, every square inch of skin on his throat attuned to the threat if he let his hand slip.

“Now this is more like it.” Beacon seemed to speak almost directly into Duck’s ear. “Our hero, at the mercy of his mystical weapon.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Duck spoke carefully, conscious of each word vibrating against the sword at his throat. He was still holding Beacon’s hilt. He was pretty sure Beacon would still unfurl at his command. Still, he couldn’t help but feel the blade encircling his neck in two menacing coils, edge against skin, loose enough not to cut but tight enough to threaten. His body was responding, hand firm on Beacon’s hilt but heart racing.

“Now place your hands behind you.” This voice was lower than Beacon’s coaching voice, more commanding.

Duck’s eyes widened. “Aw, come on, Beacon.” The idea of giving over complete control of what happened at his throat was… well, frankly thrilling, but still. “I can’t just...”

Beacon hummed, a dangerous, electric sound that buzzed against Duck’s throat. “If you wish this to continue, Duck, you will do as you are told.”

Duck wouldn’t have said he had a thing for following orders, but the choice between making himself more vulnerable to the sword at his throat and calling it all off was humiliatingly easy. “All right, all right,” he said, the words coming out breathless. He let go his grip on Beacon’s hilt and brought his hand to the small of his back, then brought the other hand to meet it. Beacon’s hilt curled slightly against his skin, and the blade hung there around him, through magic, or friction, or gravity, or maybe some alien force Duck still didn’t understand.

“Much better,” Beacon said, his voice still unsettlingly near. “Now keep still. I am not permitted to kill you, but I cannot be held responsible if you slip against my blade.”

“Dammit, Beacon,” Duck said faintly, holding back a shudder at the words. Being forced to hold still was making him uncomfortably aware of his position, kneeling against his own mattress, chest and throat exposed. Every bit of blood that wasn’t thumping against Beacon’s blade was busy pushing his cock up against the fly of his jeans, and he could almost get some relief if he could only _move_.

It was his own doing, that was the worst of it. All he’d have to do would be lift a careful hand back to his throat and uncurl Beacon from around him and that would be it. Instead he was choosing this, to be half-naked and increasingly aroused, while his mystical weapon threatened him and gloated.

“Much more like it.” Beacon’s words were slow and sinuous. “Did you think about this, Duck? I did. I thought about you helpless and captive. Thought about making you bleed for me.”

“I’m not bleeding,” Duck said, though now he wasn’t sure. He wanted to reach for his neck, to feel for cuts, but he didn’t dare move.

“Not yet.” Beacon hummed against his skin. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

So Beacon was going to keep him here, was that it? Duck breathed dizzily through his nose, cock heavy in his jeans, knees beginning to ache against the hardwood apartment floor. “How much time?” His voice rasped on the words.

“How does twenty years sound?” Beacon’s words echoed against the sensitized skin of Duck’s throat. He was trying to get a rise out of Duck, and Duck couldn’t help but take the bait. A low, plaintive noise came out of him, rumbling against Beacon’s curved blade.

“Can you picture it, Duck?” Beacon’s words were maddeningly measured. “Twenty years in one position, unable to fulfill your destiny. Kept from performing the one act that could bring you satisfaction.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been much for destiny, Beacon.” Duck’s knees were going to bruise. He went to shift forward and then stopped himself, a fresh wave of fear thrilling through him. Beacon really could keep him here as long as he chose.

“No,” Beacon agreed. “But you have a taste for it now.”

A taste for swordplay? For heroism? For kneeling with his hands behind him while Beacon whispered filthy threats against the crook of his neck, while he waited for something, anything to happen and got more perversely excited every second nothing did? “This revenge then?” he asked hoarsely.

“Hardly.” Beacon shimmered against his throat and Duck had the feeling that nothing about his state had escaped him, his hung-open mouth, his nipples shrunk to hard points, his cock painfully insistent against the fly of his jeans, hips nearly pulsing on their own, kept in check only by a fear of movement that made him somehow even more desperate.

Duck’s arms itched to move back in front of him. He was so exposed like this. “Look, Beacon, what’s the plan here? Because I gotta tell you, I’m real aroused right now, and if there’s anything we can do to address that, I sure would appreciate it.”

A buzz of amusement against his throat. “What do you wish to do?”

“Shit, Beacon, I don’t care.” Duck’s voice cracked on the words. “Just let me move a little, that’s all I need.”

“Hmm.” There was an almost unbearable smugness in Beacon’s tone. He was going to lord this over Duck for a long time. “Perhaps.”

Duck’s knees were burning. His breaths were coming shallow, frenzied. “C’mon, Beacon, what do you want me to do, beg?”

“I would not dream of asking you for such an exertion.”

Duck heard himself whine, an embarrassing, desperate sound. “Goddammit, Beacon, please.”

“Oh, now this is delicious.” Beacon sounded far too delighted. “Duck Newton has finally developed a sense of urgency.”

Duck’s hips were twitching of their own accord now. “Look, what do you want, Beacon? I’d do just about anything right now.”

“Our chosen hero, groveling on his knees. What a magnificent tableau. Never did I think I’d get to see this...”

“You want blood, Beacon?” The words came out in a desperate rush. “I’ll bleed.”

Beacon’s monologue abruptly cut off. “A most enticing offer.” The breath from his thin lips was hot against Duck’s neck.

“What do you want, hands, feet? Anywhere I won’t bleed out, I’ll do it.” Pain sounded welcome now, sensation after so much neglect.

Beacon shifted against Duck’s neck, a menacing scrape against skin. “Are you sure, Duck? Such a thing won’t distract you unduly?”

“I’m plenty distracted already.” Duck’s voice broke on the words, as if to prove his point.

Beacon gave a low chuckle. “If you’re cut,” he said, “you’ll feel it when we practice again. I would not wish…” he paused, humming softly. “…to impede your progress.”

“I don’t—” Duck tried to picture practicing combat after this, but he couldn’t think much beyond the present. Maybe it was just lust talking, but he had the vague idea that being reminded of what had happened tonight wouldn’t be a distraction so much as a focus. “It won’t.” It was a struggle to form sentences. He hoped Beacon could follow his meaning.

Beacon seemed to consider for a long moment. “In that case,” he said finally, “your hand will do nicely.”

Duck let out a breath he hadn’t mean to hold. “Okay,” he said. “So can I take you off me, or… ”

“So eager,” Beacon crooned, in a voice Duck might almost have called fond. “Yes. Go on.”

Carefully as he could, Duck lifted a hand and took hold of Beacon’s hilt. The sword straightened, unwrapping himself from Duck’s throat, leaving the skin there feeling raw and exposed. Duck brought the fingers of his other hand up to feel for wounds or scratches but found nothing. Maybe a scrape or two.

“Okay.” Duck lowered Beacon to the bed in front of him, not letting go. He was dimly aware that he was free to move again, and he shifted on his sore knees. Just that, just the jolt of pain in his knees, just the infinitesimal shift of fabric against his painfully untouched erection, was enough to draw a sound out of him, a quick, broken gasp. “All right, Beacon, shit, what now?”

Beacon’s hilt was warm in his hand. “Now,” he said, lips peeled back into a dangerous grin. “You bleed.”

Duck didn’t have to do it. That was the fucked-up thing. He could have coiled Beacon back up, gotten up off the floor, and pushed this whole night out of his mind. Instead, he scooted back on his knees to make space between his chest and the mattress, then held his left hand out in front of him, palm open. “So, fuck, just right across the palm here?”

Beacon’s voice was almost a purr. “That will do.”

“Shit,” Duck said, angling Beacon so the blade was over his left hand. He braced himself, then ran the sword across his palm, a crisp, shallow sting of a cut. There was barely any blood at first and then it surfaced, drops along a gash becoming a fat red line. He felt lightheaded, the pounding of his heart throbbing through his cut hand.

Beacon shimmered hypnotically, aglow with alien pleasure. “You are most intoxicating, Duck.”

Duck shuddered, not sure if he liked the description but responding nonetheless. “Yeah, listen, Beacon.” He winced as he spoke. Even tiny movements stung at his hand. “I want to come real bad right now. Can I do that please?”

“Naturally.” Beacon hummed. “Keep hold of my hilt. I want to feel you lose that famous cool of yours.”

Duck had set Beacon on the ground, right hand around his hilt, before he realized his dilemma.

“Beacon, I need that hand.” He was still keeping his left hand motionless; the thought of curling it around himself, the cut puckering open, made him freshly lightheaded.

“I don’t think you do.” Beacon’s words dripped insinuation, thrilling him with that same mix of anticipation and dread. “Just let me move a little, isn’t that what you said?”

Duck was panting again, dizzy with frustration. His hips were nearly shaking, and there was nothing stopping him now from letting himself move, desperate little thrusts against nothing but his jeans fly, but that was something, wasn’t it? Sounds spilled out of him, low grunts, and fuck, it felt good, jolts of pain in his cut hand intensifying the heady bliss of finally, _finally_ getting some relief.

“What a thing to behold.” Beacon’s gloating drawl set Duck’s teeth on edge, but he was so close now. “Duck Newton, mystical hero, rutting into the air like a common animal.”

“Yeah, I know, Beacon, fuck.” Duck was so exposed, naked from the waist up, and from the waist down, this—hips pumping obscenely, irresistibly. He was making noises on every exhale, a filthy stream he could probably stop if he tried, but, fuck, he didn’t want to try.

He could feel his climax looming as everything began to come together, the sting of his cut hand, the ache of his knees, the friction in his jeans, the humiliation of Beacon’s words, slicing him open. Beacon’s hilt was warm and firm in his hand, a reminder that he was being watched, that Beacon was with him, and fuck if that didn’t turn him on more. Fuck if this whole night wasn’t the hottest thing to happen in his entire adult life. Duck ground his hips forward, overpowered by want. He gave in to the feeling, eyes unfocusing, pain and friction at last enough to bring him over the edge. He came in a flood, a final humiliation, then fell still.

 

Afterwards, after taking a hot shower, after bandaging his cut hand and wiping Beacon’s blade clean, Duck half-expected Minerva to appear. “You’re different,” she’d said, after Duck and Beacon and the others had fought the bear-monster. He felt different now too, and not just because of the tenderness in his knees or the gash across his palm. Duck didn’t know exactly what tonight had meant, in the scheme of him and Beacon working together, but, weirdly, it made him hopeful.

Duck had thought once that taking up his destiny would mean missing out on simple pleasures, like the sounds of the Monongahela forest or the taste of onion soup. But it seemed now that answering the call came with its own rewards. The triumph of a finished run. The satisfaction of pulling off a swordplay maneuver. The wild, desperate bliss of whatever the fuck had happened tonight. He’d opened another door tonight he didn’t know how to shut, or maybe Beacon had opened it and Duck had just walked through. But if any part of him wanted to slam that door shut and step back over to the other side, he couldn’t feel it tonight. Tonight he just felt sore, and a little mystified, and content. He’d take it.

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to princefuckingjoel, whose beta-reading insights helped this story immeasurably. And to Toft, whose prompt inspired all of this. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> I'm [implicated2](https://implicated2.dreamwidth.org/) on Dreamwidth (I love that that's a reasonable thing to say again). Come say hi if you're so inclined.


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